Adobe is collecting all of its customers' pictures to train its machine learning algorithm

Adobe has recently come under fire for its new 'Content Analysis' section in its privacy and personal data collection permissions. This new feature allows users to choose whether or not they want Adobe to analyze their content to “improve and develop their products and services”.

It was first reported a couple of days ago by Baldur Bjarnason on Mastodon, and also on Twitter by the popular painting program Krita, that “Adobe is collecting all of its customers' pictures into a machine learning training set”. This means that, for example, if you're using Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop with the Creative Cloud, Adobe defaults to adding all of your photos, videos, audios… to the set of data to train its machine learning algorithm. It only applies, of course, if your documents are on Adobe's servers (i.e., on the Creative Cloud), but not if you're working on local files on your computer.

The main issue with this is that Adobe never announced this addition officially to its users, and that the option is on by default, while many users feel it should be opt-in, and not opt-out. Adobe users are also concerned about their privacy and the potential for their personal data to be shared with third parties.

To address these concerns, Adobe has included the option to opt-out of Content Analysis in its privacy settings. This allows users to choose whether they want their content to be analyzed by Adobe to improve its AI and machine learning tools in the future.

It seems that, for the moment, Adobe hasn't spoken publicly about this new controversial 'feature', but we'll keep you updated on our social media if there's any news from them.